2019 Active Living Census

The Active Living Census (ALC) was conducted by Healthy Loddon Campaspe in May-June 2019. It asked residents in our region about their health and daily activities.

Almost 25,000 people took part in the 2019 ALC, providing the region with detailed data about our communities' health and wellbeing. No other region in Australia has this type of data at this level of detail.

Key findings from the 2019 ALC included:

• Two in every three adults in the Loddon Campaspe region were overweight or obese (62.5%) - higher than the Victorian average of 49.7%.
• One in 10 households (9.2%) in the region were food insecure – they do not have enough to eat. In some areas, this increased to one in 7 households. This was higher than the Victorian average of 6.2%.
• 14% of adults were daily consumers of sugary drinks - higher than the Victorian average of 11.2%.
• One in every two adults (48%) met the daily fruit consumption guidelines. This was better than the Victorian average of 42.9%.
• One in every eight adults met the daily vegetable consumption guidelines (13.3%) as compared to the Victorian average of 4.9%.
• 10.6% of adults were current smokers with higher rates among males than females. This was a reduction on smoking rates for the region.
• 57.5% of residents (including children 3+) met the physical activity guidelines. People in the Loddon Campaspe region wanted to be more active more often, with 53.4% wanting to do more activity.
• Walking was the most popular type of physical activity, followed by swimming, fitness, active play and cycling.
• Food insecurity and household self-rated prosperity appeared to be key predictors for a cluster of health behaviours and outcomes, with food insecure and low income households reporting lower levels of health and wellbeing overall, higher rates of overweight and obesity, higher rates of health-risk behaviours (i.e. smoking, alcohol, sugary drinks) and lower rates of health-protecting behaviours (i.e. physical activity, fruit and vegetable consumption).